


The Only Magic I Believe In (Is the Magic I Receive From Loving You)

by delilahbelle



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-20
Updated: 2017-02-20
Packaged: 2018-09-25 21:45:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9846956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/delilahbelle/pseuds/delilahbelle
Summary: Or, four gifts Alec gives Magnus.--“No one’s ever done anything like that for me before.”Alec’s face softens. “Well, I’m going to do it for as long as I’m alive. So get used to it.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> Title from I Haven't Played This Song In Years by Neil Diamond (... which is a breakup song, essentially, oops)
> 
> I only ever read the Bane Chronicles so pretty much based in the show only. And me making stuff up 'cuz why not. 
> 
> (day five thousand and one: still can't figure out how to end stories)

How many hours has he been holding Alec’s gift, Magnus wonders hazily. It feels like forever but he doesn’t want to let it go. Alexander must know he’s a powerful warlock who doesn’t need a trinket for luck and protection—but Magnus can’t be bothered to care about that, not in anything but passing. He can’t remember the last time someone bought him a gift. Ragnor gave him one at his breakup with Camille decades ago; that’s the last one Magnus remembers getting and he isn’t sure anything came after that. And the present had been a bottle of fine whiskey and only given because Ragnor could be grumpy and he had hated, absolutely _loathed_ , Camille and hadn’t wanted to listen to Magnus mope. 

The decades before and after that present were blank to him. And Alexander had gotten him a present for no other reason than he wanted to, no special occasion, no reason but his tendency to take care of everyone around him. Magnus feels a flush of warmth and maybe a few tears. He should go to bed but then he couldn’t stare at the red and gold package in wonder. But it’s late and Alec did not mean for his gift to be a distraction. 

Still, Magnus doesn’t sleep just yet. He spells all his clothes to have a hidden pocket just for the talisman.

–

When Alec stumbles into Magnus’s living room, he looks worse for wear. His lip is split and he has bags under his eyes, and Magnus is one hundred percent sure he has not slept since he left here at five o’clock yesterday morning. Magnus is on his feet before he even registers it, watching carefully as Alec struggles to get his leather jacket off. It’s soaked. Magnus snaps his fingers and it dries. Alec doesn’t like Magnus taking his clothes off with magic. “Demons?” he asks. “Or the Circle?”

“Neither,” Alec says. “I was up all night with a vampire.”

Magnus eyes him suspiciously. His Alexander is many things but a good liar is not among them. He looks too innocent, like he’s been doing something he knows Magnus wouldn’t approve of. And it’s likely. A new vampire would be taken to Raphael, and neither Raphael nor Simon would let Alec leave the Hotel DuMort looking like he was dead on his feet. And if there was a problem in the coven, then Raphael would have dealt with it. He was unlikely to call a Shadowhunter.

Then Alec pulls something out of his pocket and holds it out, looking tentative and sweet, and Magnus reaches for it. The feel of a familiar ring in his palm shocks him. He opens his fingers slowly and revels in the sight of his lost ring. A silver signet ring imprinted with a cat eye and sprinkled with sapphires. His warlock’s ring, back from the ages where the Shadowhunters couldn’t be bothered to learn the warlocks’ names and just knew them by their symbols. He hadn’t hated it as much as he thought he might, especially when it became no longer necessary only fifty years after he made it—everyone knew his name and had for centuries now—and he’d gambled it to a vampire one night and lost it some two hundred years ago.

A couple of days ago, he told Alec this story and now… “You went to California and…?”

“I won it back,” Alec says nervously. “Fair and square. Archery competition. It was a near thing. I picked up some pointers too.”

“Did you need them?” Magnus muses out loud; it seems to him like Alec uses his bow wonderfully.

“Are you mad?”

“No,” Magnus says; then, realizing Alec is nervously awaiting a real response from him, he adds, “I didn’t mean for you to...”

“I know. I wanted to. You… you gave me the courage to take what I want and be myself and I… wanted to repay that in some way.”

“You never need to repay it.”

“I know,” Alec says but Magnus wonders if he does. “I just thought...”

Before he can finish, Magnus promptly throws himself at him. Alec laughs a little as he stumbles back at the sudden force of Magnus’s weight and steadies them both. “It’s a nice ring.”

“Wear it,” Magnus says without thinking.

“What? No! It’s yours.”

“It was common to give them to lovers, you know. Like a promise ring.” Or an engagement ring, Magnus adds to himself but it’s soon to say that out loud. Or even think it, really, but Magnus has always fallen too hard too fast. “I’m marking you as mine.”

“I think you already did that,” Alec says but he allows Magnus to slip on the ring, and neither of them say a word when he puts it on the left ring finger.

–

“Happy birthday, cradle robber,” Alec says teasingly as he holds out a gift. Magnus pauses in trying to choose an eyeliner color—tonight will be long, and he doesn’t want anything too bold to compete with his outfit—and takes the present from Alec’s hand. He doesn’t respond to the cradle robber comment, mostly because it’s rather true in a way. Alexander is newly twenty two. At midnight, Magnus will be eight hundred. 

Besides, Alec and Jace have made this joke several times over the course of the last week since Magnus told them how old he’d be turning and allowed Izzy to throw him a party at Pandemonium.

“I hope you like it,” Alec adds uneasily. His fingers play with the warlock’s ring on his finger. Magnus watches the ring twirl for a second and feels a flush of happy warmth suffuse him. He had never given that ring to anyone and the next morning he was wondering if he regretted it. But every time he caught sight of the ring on his Alexander’s finger, he can’t help but feel like he’s flying. The pleasure is a constantly expanding bubble in his chest.

“I’m sure I will,” Magnus says after a beat. He carefully unwraps the paper. Or he attempts to. Wrapping presents is not in a Shadowhunter’s repertoire. It’s too messily done to do it easily so Magnus ends up ripping off the rainbow paper. He recognizes the box from a local jeweler and opens it with a strange giddiness. Inside is an ear cuff of silver leaves veined with turquoise. The vine connecting them is a path of green opal. The colors are subtle enough not to compete with anything he wears. 

But… Alec bought him jewelry. Magnus has a hard time wrapping his mind around this. Alec, who has clearly never understood Magnus’s love of jewelry, who has eyed the jewelry box with trepidation, who waits a little impatiently for Magnus to put on all the things he wants to wear when they go out, _bought him jewelry_. “This is the best present, Alexander. Thank you.” Carefully, he places it on his ear. It goes with his shirt. Although if he had to, he would have changed his shirt. There was no way he wasn’t wearing his boyfriend’s present. “Beautiful.”

“Yeah,” Alexander says softly, his voice full of the same wonder on Magnus’s face. “You are.”

“Cliche, darling,” Magnus jokes. He reaches for a blue glitter eyeliner and meets Alec’s eyes in the mirror. “And not as beautiful as you.”

–

His birthday party is in full swing when Catarina Loss walks in the door. Magnus’s heart stops dead in his chest and restarts beating painfully fast. He rushes over, leaving Luke staring confusedly at his back. 

He has not spoken to Catarina since 1991. He doesn’t remember why now. A fight in Central Park, an ill-timed comment, a misplaced anger. Maybe all of these things at once. So seeing Catarina cautiously make her way through the crowd—the entire New York Downworld turned up for his birthday party and a few old friends from around the world—is like jumping into icy water.

(Which he’s done a time or two before. Warlocks don’t get hypothermia. Still it was probably foolish to sit in a Finnish lake in the middle of January just because the Finns did it.)

“What are you doing here?”

Catarina raises an imperious eyebrow at him. “You sent your boy toy to get me, didn’t you?”

Magnus blinks once. “He’s not my boy toy and no, I didn’t.”

“You didn’t?” She says disbelievingly. Whatever shows on his face makes her face go blank. “You didn’t. You’re actually surprised to see me. Well, your pretty little Lightwood told me you missed me and that he was sure you’d appreciate if I came to your birthday party… although I assumed you were offering the invitation through him.”

“I wouldn’t be so cowardly, Cat.”

“No you wouldn’t be.”

“I missed you.”

Her face softens. “I missed you too.”

He doesn’t know if she reaches for him or he for her, but they end up clutching each other in the middle of the dance floor. People move around them easily. Catarina is recognized as his old friend. A few people call out greetings. Alec comes bounding up, half drunk on Maia’s lethal cocktails, created especially for this event, and on the exhaustion of having been up for nearly twenty four hours. “You came!” he says to Catarina, his eyes bright and his smile wide. He turns to Magnus, suddenly unsure. “Is it alright that she came?”

"

“Yes,” Magnus says, keeping one hand on Catarina’s arm and caressing Alec’s cheek with the others. “This is the best present you could give me."

Alec touches the ear cuff. “You said that about this.”

“Well, you keep topping yourself.”

“You got him two presents?” Catarina asks. “Don’t spoil Magnus rotten, child, it will just feed his ego.”

“I wasn’t sure you were coming,” Alec tells her. “So I had to get him a present in case.”

Catarina eyes him for a beat. “Can I steal Magnus for a while?”

“Of course.” Alec touches Magnus’s hand and fades back into the crowd. Catarina drags Magnus to the side of the clubs where there’s an empty couch. She doesn’t trust him on the dance floor since that incident with a tango even if it’s two hundred years and a few dozen perfectly executed dances later. 

“He sounds sweet,” Catarina says. “But are you sure he actually is? I noticed when he came by the other day that he was wearing your warlock’s ring.” Her voice contains a silent question.

“He got it back for me. You know Mordechai can’t resist a challenge.”

She arches an eyebrow.

“They’re both archers.”

“You’re in love.” She sighs. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“I do. This isn’t Camille all over again.”

“I’m more worried about it being Imasu or Verena or Marina or heaven help us all, Samuel.”

“They loved me.”

“Not for long.”

“I don’t know if he loves me,” Magnus admits. “But he’s here and he’s not hiding us. And he got my ring back. He wears it. That’s more than Imasu or Verena and Marina. Or Samuel.”

“If you’re sure. What is that red cocktail?”

“Blood of the Angels. Maia created a cocktail for each species here tonight.”

“Does it have blood in it? From angels?”

“Shadowhunters. Isabelle offered up her blood. And only for the vampires. Pomegranate juice for the others. Want one?”

–

Magnus feels Alec’s arms around him as he watches Catarina leave. “You look happy,” Alec notes. “You were talking to her for hours. It’s dawn already.”

Magnus hadn’t noticed, although come to think of it, all the vampires were gone. “Is the party over already?”

“Almost. Even Izzy and Jace are dropping. Come on, let’s go home.” 

“Thank you for tonight.”

“Izzy planned it.”

“Not the party. Catarina. Jewelry I know you don’t like.”

“I like it,” Alec defends. “I just don’t get it.” He kisses the shell of Magnus’s ear. “You look good in it though.”

“I love you,” Magnus says without meaning to.

“I love you too,” Alec says easily, no hesitation, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. As if they’ve said it a million times before and this is just one of many. And maybe it is one of many, maybe this just the first time the words have been said out loud instead of passing between them silently in smiles and touches. 

Magnus turns in his arms and stares wonderingly at his face. “I really really love you.”

Alec grins teasingly. “I really really love you. But I might fall asleep right here.”

“I was having a moment.”

“A moment of what?”

Magnus touches the cuff, glances at where Catarina stood for most of the night. “No one’s ever done anything like that for me before.”

Alec’s face softens. “Well, I’m going to do it for as long as I’m alive. So get used to it.”

– 

Magnus doesn’t. But that just makes it more special.


End file.
